flanked by a wheelchair ramp on the north, lead up to the main entrance. They are accompanied by the original wrought iron railings and one original lamppost, slightly modified. The main entrance is surrounded by elaborate wooden decoration, with flanking half-pilasters and sidelights rising past a recessed paneled frieze to an entablature with triglyphs. A semicircular transom with radiating muntins, slightly different from those on the flanking windows, surmounts the entrance. Modern aluminum doors open into a wooden vestibule at the center of one arm of an L-shaped lobby covering all but the northern bay of the front. That arm is floored in terrazzo, with the south arm in vinyl. A gray marble dado runs around the wall, and pilasters mark the corners. A molded cornice on the wall marks the plaster ceiling where modern fluorescent lights have replaced the original fixtures. There is also an original wooden cornice over the teller windows, which have been widened and surrounded with blue Formica. Above the door to the postmaster's office in the northeastern corner of the building is a mural, Waiting for the Mail, by Stephen Etnier. Its three panels depict the wing of an airplane, a man waiting against a fence, and the bow of a ship. It was restored in the mid-1980s. History Spring Valley's first post office was established in 1848, seven years after local farmers persuaded the New York and Erie Railroad to build a stop where a farm road (now North Main Street) crossed the tracks. The settlement grew rapidly due to the rail connection to New York City and incorporated as a village in 1902. In 1931, Congress authorized 136 new post offices and extensions to existing ones in New York as part of an amendment to the Public Buildings Act it had passed five years earlier. The construction was meant to offer relief with the worsening of the Great Depression. Spring Valley's would not begin construction for another five years, in 1936. The site was purchased from a local lumber company that year. Construction began later that year, and the building opened in 1937. Its Colonial Revival design, by Treasury Department Supervising Architect Louis A. Simon, is unique to Spring Valley among the many Colonial Revival post offices in the state, many of which use variations on a basic design. Other post offices in the state, such as Fredonia, Massena and Warsaw, use a